Dear Giovanni,

Thank you for alerting Forum members to this.

It certainly sounds as if something fraudulent may be going on here. It is possible that this person, quyema3, is requesting more pictures in an attempt not simply to judge the pot you are selling and to form a better impression of it, but also to see if he can find a customer for it before he bids on it in your eBay auction. If he can, and if he can settle on a price with his potential customer, he will then bid on your pot. Alternatively, he may bid on it, win it, but then not pay you unless he can find someone to buy it a higher price than he won it for in your auction.

On another matter, let me say that I have followed your eBay auctions in the past. You have always put good items up for sale, honestly described and listed. It takes a while to establish an eBay profile and to attract regular clients, but once you have done so, as you are now beginning to find, your items will be more competitively bid for, and you will be happier with the results you achieve.

Nevertheless, even with a well established profile as a seller, eBay and PayPal costs will still eat away at your profit, as you have also realised. I have a suggestion for you. You could quite legitimately offer your items for sale on this Forum site instead, and strike your deal privately with Forum members. Did you ever consider doing something like that?

It is just one thought. There are other possible options open to you for selling your collection outside the context of eBay, of course, but perhaps this is one you may not have considered.

Best wishes,

Alan

Dear Alan,

thank you very much.

Initially I too thought that he was waiting an answer from his customer, but in such case there would be no reason for his silence. I have also seen that he has only 9 feedbacks and two of them are for not having paid his purchase. Most probably he will try to sell it somewhere, and then after receiving the payment he will disappear.

Thank you for your appreciation and encouraging. You know, ebay’s most attractive aspect is that it is a sort of gamble, you list there hoping in an exceptional result as sometime it happens (always to the others! Haha).

That is fun. Instead, by selling directly, one has to set a price, and then he starts to wonder how much it could have fetched on eBay.

BTW it is not only at eBay that the result changes according the seller, the day, and so on.

It happens also at the major auction houses.

In the past, I have sold some pieces through Christie’s and more through Bonhams. Many pieces I have sold through Nagel in Germany but never at Sotheby’s. Alas I have had really bad experience with them. I will no more contact them even if I will have a hyper rare Ru brush washer for sale. For the record, they are who believed that the clair de lune pot that I am currently selling is genuine Kangxi.

I am tired to sell through the major auction houses. First at all I live in Italy, where we have a law telling us to request an export license for antiques, which takes months to be released. Then you have the shipping costs that are not the same like standard costs, you have to pay pictures, fees, insurance and so on. And after all that, only very good pieces are sold at good price. Pieces that are not top level can sell at the lower estimate, often below what you can have on eBay.

But what is, at least to me, very hurting are the games “below the table”. You see an item sold at very high price, identical to one that you have. Then you propose them your item and they say that it is not worth to sell it.

That happened many times. On top of that, I must say that in the last years the competence of their “experts” did drop a lot. A real shame in some cases.

In the snuff bottles field then, it is much, really much worst.

Kind regards

Giovanni

Dear Giovanni,

Alan's view sounds acceptable.

Jim

Dear Giovanni,

if quyema3 has not yet given a bid, you can put him on your Ebay list of unwanted bidders, so he won't be able to bid.

Hi Giovanni,

I agree totally with the posts by Alan and Shinigami. Can I ask what is the problem with Sotheby's?

This so-called buyer aka dealer with only a score of only 9 appears to be new to ebay so I would not be that concerned with him or his failure to contact you back.

There are a lot of odd-balls out Giovanni.

Take Alans sound advice and consider selling your items thru this forum it will save you a lot of grief etc.

Mark

Dear Mark, Jim, Alan,

I did look around here in the Forum, but I have not seen a single piece sold or on sale here within the Forum.

Have I not understood correctly or where I have to look for?

Kind regards

Giovanni

You're right, there is no sales page in the forum, although it would be a good idea to have a kind of marketplace. What you can do is link to a website of yours where you show the pieces you want to sell and interested buyers can contact you directly.

Thank you dear Shinigami. Hmmm, will see, I will think about that.

BTW dear all the water pot has not been sold, so there is even more reason to stay away from it if you will see it on sale. It will be a scam because the water pot is in my hands.

Kind regards

Giovanni

Dear Giovanni,

I have some more observations about your water pot and why it did not sell. It did not look as if it was going to sell when no bids had been placed on it not long before it was scheduled to finish.

I entirely agree with your assessment that it is old, and a genuine antique. However, the problem is straightforward, as you yourself appreciate: is it Kangxi mark and period, or is it a later nineteenth century version? You decided to set the opening bid at $3,000. If a bidder had successfully bid on your pot and got it at $3,000, then s/he would have got a very good bargain if it is indeed Kangxi mark and period. But what if it is not? In that case, $3,000 would have been a very bad bargain indeed for a later nineteenth century version that also happens to be damaged.

My guess is that eBay bidders noticed your pot, considered it, but decided not to risk bidding on it for the reason I mentioned: they were not prepared to take a $3,000 gamble on it being mark and period, and when they saw that no one else was expressing an interest by bidding either, they completely lost confidence.

I can sympathise with their hesitation. Some aspects of your pot are impressive, but others may give rise to concern. Here is a case in my opinion where there can be no substitute for physical inspection of the pot on sale, something that cannot easily be done on eBay, of course.

As Mark asked in a previous post, what went wrong between you and Sotheby's, given that you say that one of their experts had believed your pot to be authentically mark and period? Why did you not sell it with them when they had given you such an encouraging valuation on it? Surely, having Sotheby's officially declare it to be Kangxi mark and period would have been a better option for you as a seller than offering it on eBay, in spite of the difficulties that you describe facing as an Italian-based seller.

I can go into my reasons as to why I myself hesitated at bidding on your pot in another post, but this seems enough for the moment. My posts on this site tend to be very long, and I fear I may often weary the readers!

Best wishes,

Alan

Hi Alan,

No weariness, here!  I thoroughly enjoy reading your posts - and threads like this. 

I thought what you said about the issues with a high opening bid quite enlightening.  I think you made a very good point.  It had never occurred to me, but I think you may be spot on.

Best wishes,

Julia

Dear Alan,

I am new on this Forum and I don’t know the general attitude of the members, but to me you are not weary at all, long readings are welcome when interesting and your posts are very meaningful.

The evaluation that I got from Sotheby’s is not a story, it is true and I have the documentation. I am not feeling confident in disclosing on a public Forum all the things, but basically I was not totally convinced by their attribution. To me the pot is more probably Guangxu than Kangxi, and besides having not decided at the time to sell it, I am not willing to afford all the troubles to send it to London (it is quite different to send Antiquities from Italy to London than sending within England) with the risk that after a few months they will say that they have re-considered their opinion, as it already happened a couple of times, with all the related BIG (again, because I am in Italy) new problems and costs, I did opt for ebay where good items are fetching good prices anyway.

I had recently a serious issue with Sotheby’s NY because of an extremely important snuff bottle. It has been a real shame, I will NEVER more contact Sotheby’s in my life.

I am not disappointed, frankly, for my pot having not been sold. Even if Guangxu and with a small damage, it is very rare. The price was not high in my opinion, these are very sought after also if Guangxu because of the rarity. The real problem is that one can’t handle it through a web sale.

If you search on ebay for monochrome beehive water pot, you will find many, and no one of them is antique. No one.

So by now it will stay within my collection of monochromes and who knows, may be on the future one of my grand-daughter will be extremely happy in selling it.

Kind regards

Giovanni

Dear Julia,

it is not really that in my opinion, or better, it may not be really that. Ebay is a strange place. If I had listed the pot at the starting price of 10 dollars, I would not be surprised if it had fetched more than 3,000 dollars. It is a total non sense, I know, but it is the reality on ebay.

Kind regards

Giovanni

Hello Giovanni,

It's nice to hear from you, we've over the last couple years had your things in the Weekly News Letter, you've had some nice things.

I understand your concerns about the currency conversion and about the strange requests for images from the Chinese fellow.  It would be nice to have an online site in the EU for you folks to sell from. 

A few years ago we were selling a collection and my images were being posted on another site in China ending one day before my auction ended on eBay, the guys would then place a bid on my things in the last day. If they won them, they would pay right away and demand overnight shipping. As punishment, I would tell them I was away on a "Trip" and they won't be shipped until the following week.  The eMail exchanges were quite hilarious after that. 

Always be careful with some of these buyers. Its all you can do. 

Best regards, Peter

Hello dear Peter,

I really have to thank you for having so often listed my pieces on the Weekly News Letter, I believe that it helped a lot for the visibility.

That story is very funny. Incredible how many "players" are around on ebay.

Kind regards

Giovanni